OMG CAD Services V1.0 standard: an approach to CAD-CAx integration

Most organisations increasingly seek to design and develop new products in shorter time periods. At the same time, increased performance demands require a team-based multidisciplinary design process that may span several organisations. One approach to meet these demands is to use 'Geometry Centric' design. In this approach, design engineers team their efforts through one united representation of the design that is usually captured in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system. Standards-based interfaces are critical to provide uniform, simple, distributed services that enable the 'Geometry Centric' design approach. This paper describes an industry-wide effort, under the Object Management Group's (OMG) Manufacturing Technologies and Industrial Systems Domain Task Force, to define interfaces that enable the interoperability of CAD and Computer Aided Engineering tools. This critical link to enable 'Geometry Centric' design is called: CAD Services V1.0. This paper discusses the features of this standard and describes a few early applications.